TV legend Prue Leith is currently on the mend after she was rushed to the hospital amid fears she was having a stroke.
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According to The Sun, the Great British Bake Off host was on vacation in Yorkshire when the health incident left her unable to speak. Her husband, John Playfair, called for help when her speech became an “incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words.”
Leith detailed the incident in her Prue’s News column.
“A few weeks ago, staying in Yorkshire, I had a migraine attack,” she explained. “It followed a familiar path. First, I can see only half of whatever I’m looking at. This is speedily followed by a bright circle of flickering, coloured lights in the upper right field of vision.”
Leith then wrote, “If I don’t swiftly swallow one of my migraine ‘bombs’ (three pills: paracetamol, ibuprofen and sumatriptan), a crashing headache will follow.”
Detailing the health scare, she wrote, “This time, my incomprehensible jumble of disconnected words convinced John I was having a stroke. I tried to tell him it was just a migraine, but I couldn’t string two words together. He rang our doctor, who asked me, could I raise my arms? Yes. Make a fist? Yes. Did anything hurt? No. Was the side of my face drooping? No.”
Based on her answers, the doctor ended up ordering an ambulance to take Leith to the Harrogate Hospital.
“The ambulance man asked me the same questions, as did a nurse on arrival at A&E, and so, after a six-hour wait, did the doctor,” she continued. “In spite of my assuring him (I’d recovered coherent speech by then) that it was a migraine, he decided on a CT scan. Two hours later, I had one, waited another hour for the results, and was released at 2am.”
Leith Recalls Her Migraines Occurring Since Her Childhood
While explaining her health woes, Leith recalled how she had migraines as young as nine years old.
“When I had my first attack, I was trying to tell my mother I wanted to be sick,” she said. “But it came out, ‘I want fish.'”
As she spoke about her latest hospital visit, the TV show host then spoke about the work NHS providers do.
“The NHS personnel are all cheerful, sympathetic, polite, helpful, and professional,” she shared. “You may have to wait forever, but when it is your turn, you are treated as if you were the only patient in A&E.”
Leith noted that the nurse who had taken her blood had been on duty for 10 hours. However, her replacement had called in sick. Despite that and the long hours, the nurse was “bright as a daisy” and said she loved her job.
“And the doctor took the trouble to access my NHS records. He explained why he wanted to refer me for a brain scan, just to be sure (people of my age, 86, are prone to mini-strokes),” she said. “And when, after eight hours, I said I was hungry, a nursing assistant went foraging for a sandwich. It was white bread with a skinny slice of processed ham.”
Despite her symptoms and stroke fears, it was officially ruled that Leith just had a migraine. “I knew all along that all I had was a migraine,” she said. “But since the speech problem is a classic symptom of a stroke, and my extreme old age being a time when mini-strokes are common, everyone was determined to be safe not sorry.”